Director David Ayer explains those Suicide Squad reshoots

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For a couple of weeks now we've been hearing that Suicide Squad has been undergoing reshoots in order to add some more humor and light moments to the movie. This is apparently due to both audience response to the trailer -- which plays up the jokes -- and to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which is ultra-serious and grim.

But director David Ayer says that's not the case. Speaking with Collider at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Ayer said that the reshoots are primarily being done to add another action set piece to the movie:

"If they don’t like your movie they tend to not want to invest in it. If they love your movie, they give you what you want. And I don’t think there’s any director that finishes a movie and says, ‘Wow that’s perfect, that’s what I really want it to be.’ Every movie I’ve ever made I wish I could go and grab some additional stuff and that’s exactly the chance I got this time. It’s like getting a new car but you get fancy rims and a new stereo.”

Ayer did not go into specifics about what would be included in the reshoots, but he also mentioned that fans of the Suicide Squad comics should keep their eyes open for Easter eggs:

“I dug deep in this and really researched the canon, pulled storylines from a lot of different sources, characters from a lot of different sources, and it all works together really well. But I think for someone that doesn’t know any of it, it works great too. It’s dense, let’s just say it’s really dense. There’s a lot of imagery, there’s a lot of nods, and there’s a lot of Easter eggs."

The director also acknowledged the fact that Batman, in the form of Ben Affleck, makes a cameo in the movie (as seen in the latest trailer) and discussed having him on set:

"I love Batman. Batman was always my favorite superhero, and then to have him walk on my set one day was an incredible experience. Even my cynical, hard-bitten movie crew got quiet when that happened. And Ben’s a great dude, he’s a good guy to work with.”

There you have it. Suicide Squad has been an interesting project all along -- the potential dark horse breakout of the DC Extended Universe -- and hopefully those reshoots are enhancing what Ayer has already gotten and not altering its tone too drastically. We'll find out on August 5.